It was always the mountain
and me. Paris Mountain.
The woods were mine:
tree tops, rocks, creeks,
space between. I topped
for the first time on leaves
straddling felled trees.
The way they laid across
space, over huge limestone,
and moss, rocks begging me
to shimmy across. I laid
on my belly, wrapped
my young arms and legs
around her girth. I couldn’t
reach my own fingertips,
pressed into the rough bark,
pressed my ear too, so I
could hear her breathe.
This was around the time
my pelvis had a body
of its own, my pubic bone
close to anything at all
and a rhythmic rocking
took over. I let myself
be all pelvis, all fingers
and ears, all torso and legs
and tongue. I was a child
who’d pressed herself
into many things but
the forest took me in.
I came alive, moaned
like an animal, looked
around. Was it me, or this
tree? Or the wild, how it
always seemed to see?
Alone, usually, but not
here. She, the trees. She,
the mountain. She, the space
between my sound and hers.
We came up together, I learned
my body, she taught me what
it is to be alive, how to be a wild
beast on this blue green earth.

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Tara Burke is from Paris, Virginia and teaches at VCU and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Her poems were recently published in Screen Door Review, Shenandoah Literary, Khôra, and Southern Humanities. Lately, she’s absorbed in making shorter, surreal love poems, speculative stories, handmade quilted things, and clay houses.